WUNRN
By Alexa Olesen
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 16,
2006
WUZHONG, China -- At a tiny courtyard mosque tucked down a back alley in
China's Muslim heartland, Wang Shouying leads other Muslim women in prayers and
chants.
Every day, Ms. Wang dons a green velvet robe
and white scarf and preaches to dozens of women at the Little White Mosque in
western China's Ningxia region.
She is a keeper of a
centuries-old tradition that gives women a leading role in a largely
male-dominated faith. She is a female imam or "ahong," pronounced ah-hung, from
the Persian word "akhund" for "the learned."
"We
need to train and educate our female comrades how to be good Muslims," Ms. Wang
said between prayer sessions. "Women ahong are the best qualified to do this
because they can relate to the female faithful in ways the male ahongs can't."
Religion was banned during Mao Zedong's radical
Cultural Revolution but faith made a comeback in the 1980s, increasing the
numbers of Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and Christians. The communist push for
gender equality helped broaden Muslim women's roles.
China's female imams are not the equals of male
prayer leaders. They do not lead salat -- the five daily prayers considered
among the most important Muslim obligations. Those prayers are instead piped via
loudspeakers into the mosques for women from the mosques for men nearby.
Still, the female imams guide others in worship and
are the primary spiritual leaders for the women in their communities.
Although it's not unusual in Islam for women to lead
other women in prayer, China's female imams are part of a trend of greater
leadership roles for Muslim women in many nations, said Omid Safi, professor of
Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Chinese Muslims are carrying on a tradition that
fell away in many Muslim societies after national governments centralized
religious institutions, making men the leaders, said Ingrid Mattson, an Islamic
scholar at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.
"This
tradition has roots," said Ms. Wang, whose mosque's whitewashed brick outer wall
bears the characters "nusi" -- "female mosque" -- in pink. "I don't know what
they call us in other places or how it's done elsewhere, but we respect the
Koran here."
Women's equal status in work and
religion is evident across Ningxia, a West Virginia-sized swath of desert
traversed by the Yellow River that was settled by Muslim traders from the Middle
East a millennium ago.
Women here work beside men in
government offices, banks, shops and schools. Religious schools for girls are
common. Often women maintain separate mosques, virtually identical to those led
by men.
"The Chinese Communist Party liberated us
from the kitchen and it gave us the same duties and obligations as men," said Wu
Yulian, a 45-year-old Muslim mother of two and principal at the Yisha Hui
People's Kindergarten in Wuzhong. "I believe that men and women are equal by
nature and that the practice of restricting women in some parts of the Middle
East, like not allowing them outside, not allowing them to drive or be seen by
men is really unfair and excessive."
Closer ties to
the rest of the Muslim world are behind the growing interest in Islamic and
Arabic studies.
China's trade with the Arab world
grew tenfold over the past decade, reaching $51.3 billion last year. And relaxed
passport controls have made it easier for China's estimated 20 million Muslims
to make the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, with nearly 10,000 expected to go
this year, compared with just seven Chinese pilgrims in 1978.
In Ningxia, where individual rural incomes hover
around $315 per year, more young Muslim women see learning Arabic as a way out
of poverty.
"It gives them a chance for employment,"
said Ma Mingxian, vice principal of the Institute for the Study of Islam and the
Koran in the regional capital of Yinchuan. "She can be a translator, a teacher,
or she can go on to study Islam at a higher level."
Ms. Ma's institute started accepting female students
in 1992. Now 118 girls are enrolled and Ms. Ma is turning away applicants for
lack of space.
At Wuzhong's imposing Central Mosque,
32-year-old Yan Mingnan shares duties with her imam husband -- he to the men,
she to the women.
Mrs. Yan said he is paid more --
about $75 a month compared with her $40 -- but he does more in the mosque while
she cares for their two children.
"His burden is
greater than mine because he has more students and leads the salat," said Mrs.
Yan.
Down a dusty track on the outskirts of Wuzhong,
30 girls, study at the Muslim Village Girl's School for Arabic Studies -- a
private boarding school set up by a local businessman.
Inside the converted courtyard farmhouse, they sing,
"We are all Muslim youth, we have a holy mission and bear the hope of
humankind." Inside the school's office, an illegal satellite hookup broadcasts
programs from Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia.
But drawing closer to worldwide Islam may come at a
price in Ningxia, where a new generation of women may start to question whether
their tradition of female imams is truly Islamic.
At
Ms. Ma's institute, 18-year-old Zhao Hongmei, in a long black robe and pink
scarf fastened tight under her chin, shakes her head when asked whether she
would consider becoming an imam.
"Women aren't
allowed to be ahong," said the sophomore from Ningxia's Haiyuan county, where
there are dozens of mosques and female imams. "Some might call them that, say so
and so is an ahong, but really they are female scholars."
As for the many Muslim women on the streets of
Yinchuan who choose not to the wear the hijab, or head scarf, Miss Zhao said:
"It's because they haven't been taught the real
Islam
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